


A Turn For The Nihilistic At Stull Cemetery

by beastlybat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22516297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastlybat/pseuds/beastlybat
Summary: The scene at Stull Cemetery from Swan Song 5x22, but as an exercise in introspection from Lucifer's point of view. Lots of angst to be found as well as jealousy and an absurd amount of parallels.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Lucifer/Michael (Supernatural)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66
Collections: Dean and Sam Bingo, SPN Lucifer Bingo, SPN Rare Ship Bingo 2020





	A Turn For The Nihilistic At Stull Cemetery

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to fulfill the Apocalypse square for my SPN Lucifer Bingo card, the Hurt/Comfort square for my Dean and Sam Bingo card, and the Lucifer/Michael square for my SPN Rare Ship Bingo card. Bless dooms for letting me crush her feelings and beta'ing this for me! You can find me on Tumblr at beastlybat.

"Are you ready?"

The chasm inside of him grew in answer and Lucifer heaved what was meant to be a steadying breath but in actuality was just a way of stalling the inevitable for that much longer. All the while, Sam was clawing uselessly against Lucifer's control, fighting in vain for dominance. Lucifer had been generous in allowing Sam a modicum of lucidity up until that point. This moment, eons in the making, had nothing to do with Sam. This moment was about him and the brother who had chosen allegiance to a senseless Heaven over the devotion they'd once shared. He could feel so many things bubbling up beneath the surface; emotions he had tried to let go of during his sentence of isolation. He'd never been good at suppressing himself. He couldn't play the part of impartiality the way he was meant to as a mighty angel of the Lord—the way Michael had perfected. All the things left unsaid between them burned like acid within the archangel, belligerently trying to break the surface, but Lucifer held them back as best he could. He was afraid. Afraid of suffering another rejection, knowing he wouldn't be able to withstand his brother forsaking him again. Regardless if it was by Michael's hands or his own broken heart, Lucifer wasn't making it out of this cemetery alive. There wasn't a reality where he won this fight and it had nothing to do with his power compared to that of Michael's and everything to do with his lack of conviction.

The realization of that cold truth seemed to placate Sam or at least gave him pause, as Lucifer felt his thrashing stutter and then come to a complete halt. Idly Lucifer wondered if his brother had completely suppressed his own vessel's psyche or if their reunion had more than one witness. He knew he should squash Sam safely away now that he wasn't fighting back so fiercely, but selfishly Lucifer needed the comfort that came from knowing Sam could to some small degree empathize and understand the gravity of this encounter between brothers.

Lucifer gave a small nod, "As I'll ever be." He searched for some divine sign, the smallest hint that Michael didn't want this anymore than he did, because there had to be more to the awkward way that Michael held himself. There had to be more to it than simply the expanse of time where they'd been separated from one another or the unfamiliarity of a new vessel. Michael may have always been the perfect, stringent soldier, but he'd never put on those airs when it was only the two of them.

Lucifer couldn't help but let that budding hope trickle out past Sam's lips, "A part of me wishes we didn't have to do this..."

He doesn't miss the brief clench of the vessel's jaw, the sigh. 

"Yeah. Me too." And there it was. The truth so earnestly laid bare and Lucifer let it blind him.

He moved closer and tried to reason despite _knowing_ that it was pointless. He was only hurting himself, "Then why _are_ we?"

"Oh you know why." And Lucifer did. Or at least, he knew Michael's reasoning. He was still clinging to the great big lie of the universe; still clinging to the idea that any of this had ever had any meaning at all.

Michael continued, "I have no choice after what you did."

"What I did?" He hesitated for a spark of a moment, still so frightened after all this time of saying anything against their Father in front of Michael and not because he feared Michael's wrath. He was far past that. In fact, any touch he'd welcome, even one of destruction. But he was terrified of being the one to break Michael's faith. Even so....this was his last chance to make his brother understand and he had to take it.

"What if it's not my fault?"

Before the words were even completely out of Lucifer's mouth, Michael was on the defensive, "What is that supposed to mean?"

Lucifer pushed forward, determined to make the other archangel see things as he saw them, "Think about it. Dad made everything, which means he made me. Who. I. Am."

Michael looked away and still Lucifer went on even though every piece of his being screamed for him to stop, "God _wanted_ the Devil."

His brother's gaze snapped back to his and Lucifer could see the inner conflict playing out behind those borrowed bright blue eyes, "So?"

"So, why?" He tried to hold that gaze, but Adam Milligan's stare dropped and Sam's heart squeezed with emotions that weren't his own. But surely, _surely_ Sam could understand the agony of having to watch your older brother grapple with the dissonance of blind loyalty to a father against the tender dedication for a thing that the father had deemed monstrous; to watch yourself be vilified in their eyes.

"And why make us fight? I just can't figure out the point..." 

Michael's posture straightened, his vessel's head lifting, "And what's _your_ point?"

"We're going to kill each other. And for what? One of Dad's tests? We don't even know the answer...We're brothers." He allowed the statement to hang in the air before begging Michael to let this go, "Let's just walk off the chessboard."

For a moment, he thought that maybe this time would play out differently than before. He recognized the turmoil, the hesitation. His brother was trying not to buckle. Always determined to stick to his convictions at the detriment of everything else, especially Lucifer it seemed. Maybe now Michael would see reason. He'd understand and accept that God's plan was nothing to them. They mattered more to each other than the feud that someone else had imposed upon them. He permitted himself to hope for the warmth of Michael's love, but when the other archangel spoke...

"I'm sorry. I-I can't do that."

...Lucifer was left colder than before, the chill permeating deep down into his Grace, numbing it so thoroughly that he couldn't even feel the hesitant near-caress pulse of Sam's soul against it.

"I'm a good son. And I have my orders."

"But you don't _have_ to follow them." He wanted to go to his brother, to embrace him. He wasn't sure he could bear to touch Michael in their true forms, but with the infrastructures of borrowed bone and muscles separating them...he wouldn't burn right up from the intensity of how deeply he'd been craving that touch for so long. If only he could touch the other, maybe he could alleviate Michael's discordance, could give him the courage to step away from his foretold destiny. But Lucifer didn't budge from his spot. Because he knew that Michael would only jilt him for trying.

"What? You think I'm gonna rebel? Now? I'm not like you."

" _Please, Michael_." 

"No. You haven't changed a _bit_ , little brother. Always blamin' everybody but yourself. We were together. We were happy, but you betrayed me—all of us—and you made our Father leave."

"No one makes Dad do anything. He is _doing_ this _to_ us!"

The quiet that fell was heavy and Lucifer felt as if he was teetering at the edge of Heaven once more, awaiting the inescapable plummet.

"You're a monster, Lucifer." The final shove. "And I have to kill you."

Resigned, Lucifer replied, "If that's the way it's got to be."

He swallowed and gathered every scrap of anger he had for their Father and directed it at Michael. He wanted nothing more than to bow at Michael's feet and go out without a fight, but he couldn't do that to his brother. If he needed to see Lucifer as the monster Dad wanted him to be, then fine. A monster he would be.

"Then I'd like to see you try."

They circled one another until the rev of the Winchester's car sounded and its radio cut through the tense silence.

"Howdy, boys." The eldest Winchester greeted as he climbed out of the car, braced on the driver's side door and the hood as if chunks of metal were any kind of protection against himself and Michael, "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

There was a flare of recognition from Sam's soul and Lucifer was quick to snuff it out, a new unidentifiable rage building within him. 

"Hey! We need to talk." Dean said so casually, moving to stand in front of the car's hood.

Lucifer and Michael shared a glance. 

"Dean," The gall of this hairless ape. It would almost be amusing, if it weren't so incredibly irritating, "Even for you, this is a whole new mountain of stupid."

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talkin' to Sam."

He wasn't entirely sure if it was his own built up emotion threatening to spill forth or if Sam was more cognizant than Lucifer had intended for him to be.

Michael spoke, pulling the Winchester's attention away, "You're no longer the vessel, Dean. You got no right to be here."

"Adam, if you're in there somewhere, I am so sorry." 

"Adam isn't home right now."

It was interesting. Observing the exchange. Lucifer hadn't expected Dean's intervention. Perhaps he should have. Dean hadn't said 'yes' to Michael after all. He was meant to be a reflected, albeit distorted, image of Lucifer's brother and yet he didn't seem overly fond of following kismet orders. The confrontation shouldn't have been as jarring as it was. It wasn't as if he and Sam had joined seamlessly as if they were drops of water, but then he'd always been the rebel, the black sheep. He'd expected the same of his True Vessel and that's exactly what he had found.

"Well, then, you're next on my list, buttercup, but right now I need five minutes with him." Dean looked back at Lucifer and he wondered if Dean could see past the vessel to the parts where Sam gave way to Lucifer. These brothers were as bonded, as codependent as Lucifer had once been with Michael. Could Dean see straight to Sam's soul, past the flesh and cocoon of Lucifer's Grace surrounding it? Did Dean notice the feeble way it called out to his older brother while also struggling against that urge because it knew Dean wasn't supposed to be part of this scene....He didn't want Dean to get hurt. For a second, Lucifer considered moving forward to send Dean safely away from Michael's temper...

"You little maggot, you are no longer a part of this story!" Michael bellowed, swiftly moving toward Dean.

It wasn't that he couldn't see Michael at all in his True Vessel. He could. Bits and pieces were there like the selfless fury, that compulsion to protect, but Dean had clearly shaken the righteous shackles of blind faith; whereas, his brother never would. Standing there, in front of two archangels poised for a death-match, proved that Dean would have done anything to be there for his little brother, but Michael....Where had Dean gotten that recklessness from? What made him strong enough to fight for Sam instead of against him...

"Hey, assbutt!"

Time surged and his ears were filled with the cries of his brother, the crackling of the fire, and the bubbling of his vessel's skin. Lucifer had to shield Sam's eyes from the brilliance of the holy fire. Words were exchanged among the uninvited, but Lucifer hardly heard them through his flood of rage. His focus narrowed in on his brother's attacker. He hated, under normal circumstances, to harm one of their own kind. Demons, humans they were nonessential. They were creations that had no right to exist in the first place, even if his own pride did cause him to occasionally hold demons up to a higher standard than they truly qualified for...Lucifer didn't see angels as expendable; however, he held nothing but contempt for the fool in that moment. 

"Castiel." He gritted, squaring off, "Did you just molotov my brother? With holy fire?"

There was a small sense of gratification in the way Castiel backed down, moving away, his body language becoming more submissive as if he'd only just remembered who he was messing with. 

"Uhh, no?"

"No one dicks with Michael but me." 

A single snap and Castiel was blasted apart; vessel, Grace, and all. There was no satisfaction in it. Having taken care of the fleeting distraction meant that he now had no choice but to feel the mounting ache of his destiny. Michael would return soon enough, and it would be to tear him down once and for all. There was no veering from the path their Father had paved. He saw that now. He'd failed to make Michael consider the possibility of an alternative.

And there was Dean, buzzing in his ear like the persistent gnat he was.

"Ya know, I tried to be nice, for Sammy's sake. But _you_ ," Sam's fingers gripped at his brother's jacket and Dean, fucking Dean Winchester, tried his damnedest not to look terrified the way Castiel had done as Lucifer continued, "Are such a pain in my ass."

Dean was sent crashing against the window of his car as Lucifer's rage—or was it jealousy—crescendoed. And then shots rang out and was there anything more underwhelming than the invention of the gun? Destruction was never meant to be so...impersonal.

This surrogate family of Sam's was truly something else. Lucifer couldn't understand why they were willing to die for this, for Sam....Why Sam got to have that infallible bond with these people and Lucifer...Lucifer had no one. A quick turn of Sam's hand ended another one of them and left Dean crying out, "No!"

 _Dean_. The fearless-to-a-fault older brother, the one who had started this whole 'apocalypse' in the first place. His own brother was going to return to rip Sam limb from limb and tear Lucifer's Grace to shreds until there was nothing of him left and it was all Dean Winchester's fault. 

"Yes." A bitter promise as he grabbed the human's leg, sliding him off the car and causing him to collide right into a punch that left him with blood oozing out his mouth and still Dean called for his brother, tried to reach him. 

"Sammy, are you in there?"

"Oh, he's in here alright." Lucifer assured as the onslaught of his attack went on, "And he's going to feel the snap of your bones."

How was this fair? How was it just? What made Sam Winchester more worthy of love than Lucifer was when Sam was meant to be an extension of Lucifer himself? Why did he get Dean—who was happy to be beaten to a pulp for the sliver of a chance that he could get through to his brother, to this other half of his soul and be there for him?—and Lucifer received nothing but Michael's back turned on him again and again. Michael had forsaken him. At every turn. Dean forgave. So easily he forgave time and again. What kind of sacred retribution was this? 

"Every single one." Lucifer hoisted Dean off the ground. This had nothing to do with the human himself, but he made for an excellent punching bag. The unfairness of their mirrored stories caused Lucifer to lose all sense, rapidly dissolving into an unrefined force of rage as he wailed on Dean, splitting his face open, forming welts and deep bruises already deepening to a violent yellow.

Flashes of what he'd lost only served to propel Lucifer's anger. The sincere and easy intimacy of Heaven when it had just been the four of them and their Father and showing off to make his brothers and their Father light up in amusement. He recalled the time spent sparring with Michael ferociously and then the two of them taking their time mending one another because they weren't meant to hold each other in higher esteem than the others but they did and in those moments they had an excuse to touch, to stroke one another. Somehow those memories began to mix with Sam's and he saw shared moments spent on the road with music blaring, the human brothers embracing, moments of joy and of tension, firsts experienced together, standing as shield before the fury of the father, secret moments stolen surreptitiously, whispered fervent proclamations shared between the two eldest archangels as they watched the world blossom into being, laughter and singing, words of devotion pressed into collar bones within darkened motel rooms, mistakes made and owned together, pranks pulled to pass the time, resting peacefully knowing they're completely safe in the other's presence, Michael petting Lucifer soothingly as his younger brother spilled his doubts, looks exchanged and shared smiles, bickering over musical tastes, begging Michael to fly with him through the stars, the Winchesters sitting on the car's hood and smiling up at those same stars, initials carved into the interior with knives too big for their small hands, plastic figures shoved into crevices of that car...

"Sammy, it's okay." Lucifer stopped to stare down at Dean in disbelief, "It's okay, I'm here. I'm here. I'm not going to leave you."

Lucifer landed two more punches, Sam's face screwing up in the terrible torment Lucifer felt.

"I'm not going to leave you!"

Lucifer reared back to throw another punch, this time with the intent of ending it, because his pain was becoming too much. The longer Dean endured without showing signs of regret and the more Dean spoke tenderly through the shards of enamel and globs of blood, clawed at him. Lucifer crumbled, resolve asunder. There was a roaring of deafening silence blocking everything out and he felt the sensation of isolation he'd endured for so long rush to encapsulate him. He gave Sam control as he lost his will to hold on. Why was he hurting Dean? He couldn't take something so precious from little Sammy. His intent had never been to cause Sam harm of any kind. Sam was an unfortunate but necessary means to an end, and he hadn't been lying when he had apologized to him for that, but his emotions had gotten the better of them. They always did and he always went too far...

Lucifer receded as Sam began to put up a fight again. Perhaps he had been fighting for a while and Lucifer had been too preoccupied to take notice. The same memories Lucifer had felt washed over Sam in reverse as the control shifted and Lucifer became small within their shared consciousness, lamenting over the hollowness he was left with.

He felt rather than heard Sam him tell his brother that it was okay, tell him goodbye. Lucifer knew Sam well enough to know he'd open the cage and jump. And that was okay.

Lucifer had been such a social being. It had been particularly cruel that God had given him a punishment of complete isolation. It was a miracle that the silence hadn't driven him insane. But he would spend the rest of eternity there in that lonely and quiet cage and willingly too if it meant that Lucifer would be safe from having to fight his brother. He wouldn't be alone this time. He'd have Sam. He braced for the fall, for the relentless chill.

But Michael returned before Sam had the chance to jump and Lucifer should have seen the inevitability of it, should have known that Michael's desperation to fulfill his orders wouldn't let him stand back and watch his chance to make God return be lost to the cage.

They all fall together; the two archangels and their respective vessels. He was half expecting Dean to jump in after them.

He allowed himself to think maybe, _just maybe_ this playing out as it had was for the best, because the cage wouldn't let them kill each other. It was designed to hurt but not to kill. Death would have been too kind for the Adversary. You can't make an example out of a memory. He'd always been more effective to God's narrative alive but contained. _Just maybe_ somewhere during their eternity together, he'd be able to mend that bridge and get Michael to see things from his point of view. Maybe Sam could even teach him how to be a better little brother.

The dark, cavernous tunnel roared around them as they fell, the absence of sound cloaking Lucifer as he howled in sorrow and rage and jealousy over the relationship Sam and Dean shared, over being the thing that ended it. His wings unfurled, wrapping around Sam's body to protect it, bracing for impact as their surroundings turned still and black.


End file.
